Contexts of early Christian art: basilicas, space and Roma Christiana, 312-384 CE

© 2016 Dr. Lachlan William James TurnbullThis thesis investigates the contexts of Christian art in the city of Rome during the fourth century. It aims to raise our awareness of the contingency of art-historical narratives, and the contingent nature of our objects of study. Traditional approaches have presumed the existence of fixed material corpora constituting the phenomenon of 'early Christian' art. This acceptance of Christian exclusivity is at odds with new understanding of deep Christian entanglement with the various contexts of everyday life in Rome. Recent advances in the study of late antique Rome have suggested that the transformation of the city from 'pagan' to 'Christian' began considerably earlier than once imagined, and that there was no 'pagan reaction' or 'classical revival' late in the fourth century. In addition, the emergence of networks of non-monumental sites provoked ideas about Rome as a 'Christian city'. The imperial basilicas are likened to lightning rods, directing and channelling energies in the Christian cityscape, but neither powering nor determining the course of the storm-clouds. Moreover, given the restriction of physical space for assembly in the imperially-sponsored basilicas, there were many more Christians 'outside' the churches of the emperors and the bishops than 'within' them. This meant gradual social and cultic involvement with Christianity, best characterised as 'entanglement' rather than hegemonic and unidirectional 'Christianisation'. The study of early Christian art has been largely untouched by these advances, and still looks toward 'lost' monumental originals and iconographic analysis for its objects. Chapter 1 reviews the theoretical and methodological aspects of the study and establishes the method of contextual analysis. Chapter 2 outlines some contextualising prolegomena that support site-specific analyses. In Chapter 3, the role played by elite social contexts is considered; in Chapter 4, the role of martyrs in art; and in Chapter 5, rituals and attitudes around death. The thesis hypothesises that early Christian art had agency, that is, that early Christian art performed a particular kind of 'work' in making early Christian Rome. Rather than following traditional art-historical narratives in placing emphasis on development and change in early Christian iconographies, the thesis consider the ways in which images, viewers and spaces interact. In short, Christian art not only reflected what Christians demanded of art - it was recursive, in turn affecting what Christians expected to see. The material evidence reveals an ongoing and deep-seated entanglement of Roman Christians in the saeculum. The contexts of early Christian art are revealed as productive and functional actuators in the definition of Christian Rome